CIA director apologizes for spying on the Senate
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has admitted that a few of its officers accessed Senate computers improperly, read the emails of the Senate staff, and exhibited a severe “lack of candor” when they were interviews by agency investigators. This is all according to a CIA inspector general’s declassified report.
The document, which was released earlier today by the CIA, is the summary of an internal CIA investigation that prompted CIA Director John Brennan to abandon his defiant position in the matter and apologize to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. An internal accountability board, chaired by former Senator Evan Bayh, has been convened by Brennan to examine whether or not the officers involved should be disciplined.
The agency employees were attempting to track down certain documents, and in the process, improperly access Senate computers, the inspector general found. The CIA office of security then began a “limited investigation” which led to the surveillance of Senate emails, shortly after Brennan ordered the review to a halt. In interviews with CIA investigators, three information technology staff “demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities”.
The CIA inspector general promptly shared his finding with the Justice Department after concluding that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between” the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to a shared classified computer network. The shared network had been accessed by Senate aides to acquire classified files on CIA interrogations. The CIA penetration occurred after the Senate aides acquired documents that the CIA claimed were internal.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Senator Saxby Chambliss were both informed of the incident by Brennan, who then apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the (inspector general’s) report”.
Read more about the story at Fox News.
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